Musical Semiotics in Growth - SemioticSigns.com

Values and their cognition in the
semiotic theory of Charles S. Peirce
M,qctnt Jtn ro Nsxt
Preliminary remarks
Cornplying with the useful postulate of cohesion between the title of the
paper ancl its content, I wish to make some snrall supplenrentations in
ref'erence to this text. My objective is to show the possibilities of
carrying out such an interpretation ot'some threads in Peirce 's theory of
signs that will reveal the aesthetic involvement o{' sorne semiotic
categories constituting the stent of this theory. The inquiry oriented in
this way. hased on the hypothesis ol'the aesthetico-semiotic function o{'
the interpretant category, will refer to the comparative material
consisting of solutions arrived at by John Dewey (1934, 1935) in his
work dealing with axiological matters. At the same tinre, these solutions
present at several poillts an interesting exanrple of the "general
philosophic convergence" that can be shown in reference to two
philosophic systems that fundamentally differ in their assumptions.
Peirce's avoidance of direct refbrence to the category of "values"
makes it difficult to recognize the areas of his semiotic reflections that
"suggest" the problenr of values. However, when we analyz,e
penetratingly the group of questions associated with the philosophic
prcmise flndamental for the pragmatists and articulated as the thesis
about the unity of cognition ("thought") and action, particularly the
practically-involved action, we fincl in consequence some threads
revealing the axiological dimension of the Peirce's philosophic system.
The statement about the axiological involvement of the philosophic
thought of pragmatists does not seem to be very revealing, if we take
into consideration that alnrost all protagonists of this onentation refer to